Second Idea: Fictional Reality.

Although not that many people like to admit it, I'm one of those people who watches reality shows. I don't watch the British ones, mainly because I find them over the top which is strange because the American versions are just as bad. I think it's because our generation especially, are so used to watching American programming that we don't see the cringe and the over dramatics as much like we would the British version.

In my spider diagram, I had a few categories connecting to my second idea. I had entertainment linked with TV to start off with. I'm a big television person; I haven't got around to watching the big shows like Game of Thrones, House, House of Cards or Orange is the New Black yet, because there isn't enough hours in the day. I am however a massive fan of shows like The Office (The American version, not the British) and Parks and Recreation, to name two that I thought of as soon as I first came up with this idea. Both shows are mockumentaries, following characters around their daily lives; one being a parks department and the other being an office environment. They both have 'talking heads', where a character will sit or stand in a room and talk to the camera directly and I wanted something similar to this for my second idea.

Another aspect taken from the world of television was the thought of reality shows. There have been numerous reports of former reality stars like Lauren Conrad for example who came out against "The Hills" (One of two reality shows she had been on) and said that the show was in fact for the most part set up. Phonecalls were set up, if you got in a fight with someone, that person would then be at the same restaurant a few days later and you weren't made aware until they came up to your table, meaning the camera could catch your first reaction, whether you wanted the person there or not. There has always been a lot of spectulation about these types of shows and of course, we all know that they're not real, but how much of your actual life is ACTUALLY on these shows? I wanted to use this as a fake behind the scenes of this type of thing and show the audience that it can be just as fake as a fictional show.

Going back to the spider diagram, I wanted to include 'trapped' and 'emotional' in the story too because this girl feels trapped in her own life which is why she is opening up to someone but then she suddenly gets trapped her own reality and doesn't know why. So I want the story to be fictional but with a reality aspect. Below are notes that I wrote down when I first initially thought of the idea to give you more of the story itself (because I hadn't exactly explained that yet):

• A girl is talking to a therapist or a friend about everything that's going on in her life, she says "my life's like a TV show" and says how everything on TV looks/sounds so much easier. As she puts her head into her hands, she sighs. She lifts her head up to see a camera has replaced the person she was talking to. It's clear that she's on her own reality show; she's been asked to adjust her mic, someone has come in to fix her hair; she walks out of the room to the director and he tells her that she needs to go home and ring the friend that she had had a falling out with a few days before.
• The end of the story comes when the girl walks into the original room complaining about what she's been through with the director; constant cameras etc. and she's asked by the camera person (who has now turned into the original therapist/friend she was talking to) "TV's harder than it looks isn't it?" She answers with a line saying yes and puts her head into her hands. She lifts her head up again and the cameras, scripts, sound mics, are gone' the therapist/friend then says something inspirational like "Now let's take this one step at a time. Soren Kierkegaard once said that 'life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced'."

I understand that this story has a few points that I need to address first. It could be very cliched and there is only a small possibility that that could work in my favour. I am also aware that the ending needs to be worked on; she needs to breakdown, or have something happen to make her realize that she needs to be happy within herself and find a way to do that, so that's why she gets taken back to her 'old life' essentially. This is still a very basic idea, but I'm hoping over the next few days I can flesh it out and even if I don't get to make this, I still think I will keep it in my notebook for future reference.

Even though I can see a few problems with the idea, it fits into the theme of 'dislocation' quite nicely. The girl is stuck in her own problems, and she feels dislocated so to help her fix her old problems, she has to face new problems with the cameras being stuck in her face and being told to see people that she doesn't want to. As she does these things, she learns that she's not the only one going through this situation.

First Thoughts Spider Diagram.

After my previous post earlier on tonight, I decided to write all of my first thoughts down. I liken it to math; some people can do it in their head, others have to write it out on the page. I'm the type that has to write it down. So that's exactly what I did. I drew a spider diagram (or mind map) of all my first thoughts; these are just words for the moment that stuck out to me while thinking of 'Dislocation'.

After seeing everything written down, it makes everything a lot easier to process. Yes, there are a lot of words written down and you could say, "Well doesn't that make it harder?". Absolutely not in my case, everyone works at different paces and has different ways of working, this is just my way.

Two things I love. Spider diagrams and lists. They make me feel more organized and slowly calm that overwhelming feeling of "there's so much to do and not enough time to do it". The diagram looks slightly organized to anyone looking at it, but to me, I know exactly what goes where, and I'm positive that it's going to help me move past this creative block.

First initial theme thoughts.

Since finding out our theme last week, I hadn't actually realized there was going to be a theme, I thought we could make anything we wanted essentially. So after realizing this, part of me was actually glad that we have some sort of limitation.

Getting into the 'depths of life' for just a second, I personally feel like we have too much choice. For example, we go into the supermarket and you go to look for a cereal; not only are you bombarded with special offers and comparing prices of the shop down the road, you're also given at least 100 choices of cereal with different shapes, different flavours, different ingredients, different health benefits (or lack of) to name a few. In the 21st Century, there's no such thing as 'simple', there's a lot more choice than the world used to have and sometimes that can be extremely overwhelming.

Back into the main point I was trying to make; with our theme we are limited to a certain point and this makes the entire process a lot easier. We have to justify our final decision on what we want our films to be about, if we can't justify why it fits into our theme, then we can't use it. Sounds like a bad thing when actually, to me anyway, it's smart. It's less pressure, it makes us think about why we want to make our idea and it makes us research even further to make sure that everyone involved understands exactly why you're doing it as well as you being 100% on point about everything you want to happen.

"Dislocation"

For our Special Subject Investigation for Creative Media Production unit, we were given the theme of "Dislocation". You could go down a number of routes with this idea; we have the option of doing a documentary or a fictional story so no matter what you decide to do, you can from so many possibilities; choose the body side of the word or jump into the deep end and go for the more psychological side of things.

Physical

When you hear the word, "dislocation", I think the first thought in everyone's mind is something in the body. That could be a dislocated arm, leg, wrist; but in my personal opinion, I think keeping in the physical mind set would make an interesting documentary.

Location/Time
After thinking over with the theme for a few days, my first main idea was something along the lines of being stuck in a place or a time where you think you don't belong. This can be anything from a 'Freaky Friday' state where you're stuck in someone else's body and have to live someone else's life. I also thought of today's generation where people will look up to the likes of Marilyn Monroe and wish there had been born or grew up in the era she had been around, and everything from music to fashion, some say "I was born in the wrong generation". I possibly want to look into something of being stuck in a time or location and not being sure why the character is there and going with them to figure it out. Using this 'plot point', if you did good enough research you could maybe find someone or a few people for a documentary who believe they don't belong in this generation and dress like they are still in the 50's, 60's, 70's for example, and base the documentary around why they would prefer living in a different era to what they live in now.

Psychological
Every topic you delve into in film making needs research but if you were to make either a fictional story or documentary of a psychological nature, your research needs to be on power depending on what type of issue you would be using within your story. I always like the idea of going into a deeper state of mind and with our theme, it would be easily achievable. A film that I would like to explore further if I chose to go into this side, would be "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". I have seen this film once before and when thinking psychological, this film was something that shot out of my head immediately because of the relationship within the story and the journey of living through something and it being taken away because it being there, just hurt so much.

These were just a few of the routes I could go down with my final year film, but I want to try and take some time to further my ideas that I have so far as well as develop new ones. I'm really looking forward to coming up with some new ideas following some extra research.